If you focus too much on integrating kicking and striking, you aren't going to be doing aikido. For now, I'd say, just keep training - you are learning techniques that are building blocks, like learning phonemes and words in order to be able to make sentences and paragraphs - but the real goal is never to "be able to do kotegaishe" in a given situation; it is to have the correct technique for a given situation become apparent.
And in terms of how to deal with kicks and strikes - fun experimenting with dojomates on the mat after class!